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Monday, April 28, 2014

Although the Athabasca Oil
Sands of Alberta, Canada, form one of the largest sources of hydrocarbons on
the planet, and are a common topic in geopolitical debates, the origin of the
sediment itself remained largely unknown.In this paper, Benyon et al. use detrital zircon uranium–lead (U-Pb) geochronology
to examine the provenance of the McMurray Formation, the most significant
Athabasca unit.The data reveal that the
majority of the sediment in the Athabasca Oil Sands originally were derived
from Appalachian sources in eastern North America. Nonetheless, several major
tectonic provinces from across North America contributed sediment to these
deposits (Canadian Shield, Appalachians, Cordillera), and their relative
contributions changed through time. Collectively, these results emphasize the
potentially important role of transcontinental sediment dispersal in these
deposits, and other siliciclastic successions as well.

Thursday, April 24, 2014

JSR PaperClips readers: Please welcome Dr. Leslie Melim as the
new co-editor of Journal of Sedimentary Research. Leslie’s general
responsibilities will cover manuscripts in the topical areas of carbonates and
diagenesis.

An SEPM member since 1988, she has served as JSR Associate
Editor for Book Reviews (2001-2004) and as Associate Editor since 2004. She
also has served on the editorial board for Sedimentary Geology and
FACIES. Currently, Leslie is a professor in the undergraduate-only Geology
Department at Western Illinois University. Her research has included the
diagenesis of Paleozoic through Neogene carbonates, but now focuses on the
geomicrobiology of speleothems, principally those that grow in cave pools.

Leslie
is enthusiastic about her new position: “I’m excited to serve SEPM as the
new co-editor of JSR. I look forward to working with authors, the associate
editors, reviewers and the JSR staff to maintain the high standards for which
JSR is known.” And we are looking forward to continuing the journey
with you, Leslie!

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

For years,
children and readers of 16th and 17th century English
literature have fancied the notion of the Proverbs of John Heywood that claimed that “the moon is made of
a greene cheese.”Although the proverb
has been largely ignored for centuries, new explorations of surface sediment on
Mars have re-opened the controversy, albeit on a different celestial body.In this study, Greenman and Neila
describe observations
of slope angles and grain sorting trends from the Martian surface west of Caseus Rotula that suggest the presence
of noncohesive granular materials, like many granular
materials from the kitchen (e.g., coffee grinds and
Brazil nuts).These data were
integrated with data on ultrasonic velocity from sediment, which
illustrate that velocity of the Martian surface sediment average ~1600 m/s and
show temperature dependence---trends remarkably similar to published measurements
of Cheddar cheese (not green cheese, however).These sediments are interpreted to reflect a primal Martian crust source (there's "cheese in the crust"?), perhaps
generated as impact ejecta de brie.